Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/209

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THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
197

a human being, with strong affections and a keen interest in the human life around him. He had to live as well as to think, and to reconcile his intellectual ambition with hard necessities. The pith of his early story was already known in part from his autobiographical fragment. Further details make the picture more impressive. For a time he had to thrive under conditions which were only not blighting because his courage made them bracing. The school at which he got his brief training was a 'pandemonium.' He wished to be an engineer, but was forced to become a medical student against the grain. He found, however, a sufficient arena for the exercise of his awakening faculties. Physiology, 'the engineering of living machines,' attracted him, though he cared little for other parts of the necessary studies. From Carlyle he learnt a hatred of 'shams,' or perhaps rather learnt to give form to an innate antipathy to that commodity. Carlyle, too, set him upon the study of German, afterwards invaluable, and suggested some early incursions into the field of metaphysics. A fortunate accident afterwards forced him to spend four years in the Rattlesnake, where his personal accommodation, as he testifies, was not much better than Jonah's; where he had to pass months